


death-marked love

by MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Bisexual Male Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Everyone wishes Paris had syphilis, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Musical and Shakespeare Blend, Polyamory, Swordplay Lessons, Swords, Zombies, reality is much worse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 21:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/pseuds/MontagueBitch
Summary: "A plague on both your houses"—Mercutio need not curse, for it's already here. Men are turned into half-alive beasts, and it's both contagious, and deadly. Formerly bitter enemies become reluctant not-quite-enemies in the face of the undead. Sixteenth-century-ish, mixed-inspiration r/j fic, with zombies, of course.





	death-marked love

**Author's Note:**

> See the end of this work for some spoiler-y notes. That said, please enjoy my odd sort-of-period-set zombie au. Otherwise known as "God, I wish it was the pox."

He stands, waiting, scratching idly at his left wrist, gloved in leather on a physician’s orders. The rash had started there, of all places, despite the fact that the pox rarely passes between men’s hands. He supposes his thighs had shared their burden with his lighter limbs, or perhaps it had lived in his blood until a mad rogue in an alley bit at his hand. There, the hidden pain had spilled out from the wound, flowering across the rest of his skin, like weeds pollenated by one horrid, misguided bee who missed her flowers.

The summer comes to a crescendo, and, unseasonably, the Count thanked his tailor for making a doublet crisp enough to hide his neck and thick enough that he’s utterly covered. As much as he curses the heat, which does no favors to the constant pounding in his head, the fatigue that’s caused him to swoon under summer sun and duress more than once these past days, when Capulet looks at him and shows no signs of flinching from the rash Mercutio chid him for, the gratitude returns in multitudes, a phalanx of hidden relief.

“—Of course, my daughter is still quite young, and I have no other children,” Capulet is saying, “this isn’t a decision I’m inclined to take lightly, Count. You have to understand that.” Ah, yes, he’d expected to hear such a thing. It didn’t change that his heart was set on one aim—marry someone innocent enough that his family and their associates will _shut up_ with the rumors of him having the damned pox.

“I understand—and praise!—your care, Capulet, I do,” He says, all too dire for real sincerity, but too masked to be called on it, “but girls younger than her are wives already. And of course, she’d live quite handsomely. I’m no man of modest means.” In doubt, he can default to his name, to the handsome sums he lives on. He knows it’ll weigh as heavy as any affection. Numbers and names, as far as he’s concerned, always do so.

The falter of the stern lines on Capulet’s face all but confirms it. Paris doesn’t think he’ll have much work left to do to win his pretty daughter. Enough chips wins any game. “I understand your offer, Count, to be a generous one, no doubt. I only ask you woo her gently—win her. In three days, my halls will be open and music pouring out. Let her meet you, then.”

Three days with an answer incertain is more than Paris had set out for, but he slogs too slowly through the fog in his brain, his mind’s eye dulled and his soul’s feet weighted with lead, to argue any more today.

“I will see you then.” He assents.

“I promise, Capulet, your daughter and I shall light up the dance floor.” With that, Paris takes his leave.

 

* * *

 

 

“You look terrible, Coz,” Mercutio, foxlike, glides into his room like a wisp of smoke, and Paris couldn’t follow him with his eyes until he had materialized, already in front of him. Mercutio’s mask, glittering and wild, catches whirlpools of light, and makes Paris dizzy. He swore he hadn’t drank nearly enough last night to be this ill-at-ease today, but he brushes the thought aside

“I did not,” he says, pinching his temples, “in fact, ask you.” Paris grabs for his looking glass, and gazes back at glazed eyes, sunken shadows of purple that train from them. He puts it down without a word, daring not to give Mercutio the slightest push, which he would run, a dandelion’s dancer in the wind, with. He thinks it fortunate that he shall be painted and covered this night, that his bride-to-be won’t see what a sickly thing he looks.

“I’m only saying, I wouldn’t marry you if you had Nero’s empire and Cleopatra’s palace, looking like that.” His cousin shrugs, taking an apple from the dish before him, punctuating his point with a liberal bite, which he chews like a wolf.

“Oh, damn you—it’s a fortunate thing it won’t be you I’m wooing, then, isn’t it?” Paris rolled his eyes, and flicked his hand. “Out. I’ll not endure all this.”

“As you wish, Coz,” Mercutio leaves with a bow, exaggerated. He says something else before, but the aching in Paris’s head has begun to drum a beat in his ears, and his cousin may as well be under the ocean.

Paris steadies himself with a breath as he rises from his seat, and dons his mask. This night will be a long one, but a secured alliance and the promise of an heir on the horizon will make it but a half-remembered, small pain in comparison.

 

* * *

 

 

The hall glitters—banners of silk dyed to match ruby and gold hang, catching the light of torches enough to burn a village down. The musicians sway, possessed and lost in their own tunes, as more and more guests are ensnared with the dancing plague. Goblets, shined and jeweled, pass from hand to merry hand, and each guest is, themself, a spectacle. Capulet’s daughter, reluctant as she had been an hour ago, cannot help but feel some of the excitement wash over her now; and being caught in a dance with a masked stranger shakes off much of the morose air from the night before. Lithe feet carry her until her shoes begin to chafe and her lungs beg she pause for a drink.

Juliet meets the Count not long after her cousin and father draw one another away, terse and scowling, to a corner. She is fairly sure that he is already drunk—at least, there exists no better explanation for the way he stumbles towards her. He is not, however, brushed by the ruddy liveliness of her father when he’s nipped at the wine, or Tybalt’s heightened swagger on nights she has seen him come home later. The Count lurches forward, face made of wax gleaming, mask pulled down so that it hangs around his neck.

“Juliet, at last,” he says. He stops, leaning against a table, and he sways, a leaf in the wind, but eventually he finds his balance, as if he’s finally decided to stay. “I have hoped to beg a dance of you all night.” She is not fully convinced he’ll be much of a dancer, at least as he is.

“Oh, I—”

“Time is of the essence, is it not? Will you join me, when the music changes?”

“—I will.”

His expression is blank, without even an acknowledgement; his eyes, glossy and pale, are stades away. A beat.

“County Paris?”

He comes back to earth with a start, and looks at her like a thing dropped from the sky, into his lap.

“Pardon?”

Juliet feels as though they are on two different earths, now, shouting across a chasm, and not quite talking. She does not know what the beginnings of love are meant to feel like, but she knows that it cannot be this.

“The dance—once the music changes?” She pauses, making sure he has heard her this time, and though his eyes are no brighter than they were, the rest of his face has enough life to nod his awareness. “I agreed.” At that, she smiles, and she thinks it would not be so bad a smile, were it not for the rest of him. Close as they stand now, something smells overripe on his person, and she can’t help but fear he never washes his clothes.

“Wonderful! I must warn you, I’m a fantastic dancer,” his voice sounds off, paused as if he’s reading dictation. By all means, this is not the man she’s had described to her before, and she wonders just how much he’s had to drink. “Just allow me to refresh myself, first, Lady.”

Juliet nods her assent. One dance, she thinks, and she can confirm that looking liking does _not_ move.

As Paris downs his drink, she glances at the floor—Tybalt has stalked off, nowhere to be seen, and the young man in the mask she’s been watching flashes past her.

The music swelled up, and when Juliet turned, Paris’s cup clattered to the ground.

In the next instant, he has seized the servant by the arm, and his mouth, a horrible gash, latches onto the boy’s forearm. The screams tear, rough as sand from his throat, as a thin spill of red shows just how hard Paris’ mouth clings.

The boy grabs the count’s hair and wrenches him off, revealing an angry oval of torn flesh, jagged and bleeding. Paris groans out, the first sound he’s made since he took the goblet, and it is hollow, rattling. Jaws snapping, he flails senseless limbs until he has pushed the boy back against the table.

Juliet freezes. There is a crackling, snapping sound, as the Count twists the boy’s arm around, til it breaks. Mouth meets his upper arm, now with more determination than before, as his arms encircle his frantic prey.

One measure of the music and Juliet’s blood is cold.

Two beats. The boy has thrown Paris off of him, sideways, and he falls, tilting towards Juliet. The servant’s shirt is torn, and from it hangs a half-severed chunk of flesh. She thinks she sees Paris swallow. He is all gray but for a smear of blood not his own, and those lifeless eyes trained on her.

Half a beat, she grabs the candelabra, and plated figs scatter as her arm, careless, runs roughly through.

Paris lights up the floor. Flaming, he still reachers out, mouth opening and closing, snapping his jaws like a hound. The fire does not phase him until he is fully engfulfed.

Juliet sinks to her knees, and loses all care for the tear of her gown as she rolls, crawls, pulls herself beneath the table. Her heart, her breath, and the crackle of flame is all she can hear for what becomes, in memory, a small eternity.

It doesn’t take long, before he is ash. Far too quickly, she knows. She has heard stories of heretics burned, and knows the affair is hours’ traffic at least; the musicians only now notice to stop, about halfway through a dance.

Just like that, the light has gone out. Paris, whatever horri

 Her mind goes to black, beneath the table. She does not close her eyes, or swoon, but something in her shuts itself off.

 

“Juliet,” a voice pairs with a hand, warm and long-fingered taking its place on her shoulder. “—can you hear me?” She is shaken, and only now does she realize that her cousin Tybalt is half-crouched beside the table, its cloth discarded. His voice had been so far from her mind it may well have been a stranger. “Juliet?”

She turns her head towards him, and she sees his eyes—oh, thank heaven they’re clear and not glassy, she could not bear to see such things again—lose that hard edge of panic. His dark hair is a mess, cast all over his face. For a while, she stares at him, mouth opening and closing, but words refuse to come. How can she explain what happened? How can she possibly make someone understand what it was to be courted by a ghost of a man, and kill a beast of the same man in the space of a song?

That’s not to even touch the subject of what Tybalt might have seen, and she shudders to imagine how it must have been, to see Peter losing blood and Paris in flames.

Oh, now she has words.

“Peter—” She chokes it out first. A hand shoots out to rest on top of his, and she meets his eyes. “Peter, what happened to him? Is she alive?”

Tybalt hesitates. His mouth is the same hard line it ever rests as, but the flick of his eyes, as if they could see behind him while his head remains still, speaks volumes. He has seen, if not the horror as it happened, the scene once it had.

“He’s fainted. I wouldn’t expect less, given—it makes sense he would.” Tybalt’s voice is terse, and when Juliet tries to bend her head around him, to look out at the scene, he holds her fast and stops her.

Juliet’s heart remembers now to pound. “Send a man for a physician, he can’t be left after—” she shudders, and cannot speak any further. Her stomach lurches, and if she says a thing more, she knows she will wretch, or faint herself.

“He’s taken care of.” The words are ground out, but the hand on her shoulder softens. She notices a thumb rubbing soft circles against her. Her cousin’s affection is a subtle language, but she is not a complete foreigner. Now, she could drink but a taste of something familiar, something kind, and weep for the luxury of it.

Her wet face, she realizes, means she has wept this whole time, and her eyes are stinging with the weight of it. She lets herself go limp, collapsing against her cousin’s side. She has not tucked herself against him since they were children, but now, so small in her terror, she needs that same comfort. She hears a sharp breath in, and feels him go rigid as a spooked pussycat, but he does not object, or push her off. Instead, a hand rests against her back.

Tybalt speaks again as she catches her breath in his side. “Were you hurt?”

She shakes her head, and feels him exile, a little less rigid now. “No,” she says, muffled partly, but unwilling to get up just yet. “No, he only bit Peter.” She swallows, the memory giving her a rush of vertigo, as she clings to her cousin.

There is a moment’s silence, until finally she lifts her head. “Tybalt?”

Blue eyes turn to meet hers. “Take me to my room. Please.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, thank you so much for reading! A few clarifying notes going forward:  
> I am mostly using musical interpretations of things like backstories, relationships, etc, especially re: Tybalt, and Mercutio. However, where I reject musical canon, I tend to breathe in my own interpretations of Shakespeare.
> 
> Zombie mythos is entirely my own--it begins with a rash around the bite, then other areas of the skin. Other symptoms include fatique, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, brain fog, increasingly corpselike appearance, internal loss of fluid, internal decay (hence why Paris smelled 'overripe.' Poor bastard was literally full of rot). It takes about a week, give or take a few days, to transform a person from unfortunate victim to zombie.


End file.
